On the Origin of Religion To Charles Darwin, the origin of religious belief was no mystery. "As soon as the important faculties of the imagination, won- der, and curiosity, together with some power of reasoning, had become partially devel- oped, man would naturally crave to under- stand what was passing around him, and would have vaguely speculated on his own existence," he wrote in The Descent of Man. But our propensity to believe in unseen deities has long puzzled Darwin's scientific descendants. Every human society has had its gods, whether worshipped from Gothic cathedrals or Mayan pyramids. In all cul- tures, humans pour resources into elaborate religious buildings and rituals, with no obvi- ous boost to survival and reproduction. So how and when did religion arise? No consensus yet exists among scientists, but potential answers are emerging from both the archaeological record and studies of the mind itself. Some researchers, exploring religion's effects in society, suggest that it may boost fitness by promoting cooperative behavior. And in the past 15 years, a growing number of researchers have followed Darwin's lead and explored the hypothesis that religion springs naturally from the nor- mal workings of the human mind. This new field, the cognitive science of religion, draws on psychology, anthropology, and neuro- science to understand the mental building blocks of religious thought. "There are nine- tional properties of our cognitive systems that lean toward a belief in supernatural agents, to something like a god," says experi- mental psychologist Justin Barrett of the Uni- versity of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Barrett and others see the roots of reli- gion in our sophisticated social cognition. Humans, they say, have a tendency to see signs of "agents"—minds like ow own—at work in the world. "We have a tremendous capacity to imbue even inanimate things with beliefs, desires, emotions, and con- sciousness, ... and this